Over the weekend, I was distraught to learn that Mike Baumann — my lovely, mild-mannered, Suits-loving, pineapple-curious distant cousin — had been designated for assignment by the Baltimore Orioles. Those no-good, rotten, perfidious, cold-hearted Baltimore Orioles. Did you know that Big Mike and Austin Hays had been teammates dating back to college? All those years, lost like tears in the rain.
To say I’m furious would be an understatement of biblical proportions, and the Mike Baumanns of the world are coming together to visit disproportionate vengeance upon the Orioles. I’ve already jinxedJohn Means, and I’ll take another pitcher every week until our thirst for retribution is sated. Which will probably be never. Francis Scott Key was a hack. The Wire is overrated. Neither I nor my descendants will ever eat crab again. Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. By now, you surely know the drill. I credit basketball genius Zach Lowe for creating the format I’m using, make a few jokes about how much baseball I get to watch to write this column, and then give you a preview of what you can read about below. This week’s no exception! I get to watch a ton of baseball, and this week I watched a lot of birds and a lot of bunts. I also watched a lot of the Pirates, just like I do every week. Let’s get right into it.
1. Reversals of Reversals of Fortune
For most of the 21st century, no one would bat an eye if you told them the Cardinals swept the Orioles. The Cards have been good pretty much forever, and the O’s went through a long dry period. But starting last year, things have changed. The Orioles last got swept in early 2022, and they’ve been one of the best teams in baseball since then. The Cardinals fell on tough times after 2022’s Molina/Pujols swan song season. Coming into their series this week, the O’s had the second-best record in the AL, while the Cardinals languished near the bottom of the NL at 20-26. Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Tuesday and Friday I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.
The Blue Jays haven’t yet crashed into a windowpane, never to recover, but 23-26 certainly isn’t what was expected of them entering the season. Before the season, our playoff odds gave them 49% chance to make the postseason. Toronto’s odds peaked at 57.9% on April 22, but since then, the team has fallen off. As of this morning, the Blue Jays have a 24.0% probability to make the playoffs. That leaves them with some serious decisions to make over the next two or so months before the July 30 deadline. Considering their current situation, let’s take a look at their options if they choose not to bolster their big league roster by the end of July.
Stand Pat
This is the most straightforward option: Don’t do anything and hope for some improvements. Every hitter other than Daulton Varsho, Davis Schneider, and Danny Jansen has underperformed this year, and maybe the Blue Jays can stay in the hunt long enough for their bats to catch fire. The organization may determine this is its best option simply because their players probably would have less trade value while they are playing below expectations. If the return package isn’t what the Blue Jays want, why not stay they course?
Only Sell The Rentals
The Blue Jays have a whole bunch of free agents after the 2025 season. And while they could decide to trade those guys (more on this later), Mark Shapiro and Ross Atkins may find it best to hold on to them and go for one last run next season. But that doesn’t take the Blue Jays out of the action at the deadline; they have several enticing players on expiring contracts to dangle to contenders.
Justin Turner has slumped horribly recently — entering last night’s game, his wRC+ in May was -21, after 152 in March/April, bringing his seasonal wRC+ down to 96 — but if he can rebound to being solidly above average, contenders would be happy to acquire his righty bat and postseason experience. The Twins, Rangers, and Rays all have gotten wRC+ values below 80 from their designated hitters, and Turner can also fill in at third base, second base, and first.
Yimi García has been one of baseball’s best relievers this season, allowing just one run in 19 innings. He’s also struck out 35% of opponents, and his xERA (1.44) and FIP (2.24) both back up his solid performance. He would make any contender’s bullpen better, and he’s always bounced around between roles, so he doesn’t have to be pigeonholed into a particular inning or situation. It is worth noting that García has never been this good before, and as Ben Clemens wrote in his column yesterday, “you can’t trade your newfound reliever for a shiny prospect,” so it’s unlikely that García alone would net the Blue Jays a strong return package. That said, if Toronto is out of the race, it might as well get something for a 33-year-old reliever who might not be with the team next year anyway.
Lefty Yusei Kikuchi is rather quietly pitching the best he ever has in the majors, with a 2.64 ERA across 10 starts and a career-low walk rate of 5.5%. Teams always need starting pitching, and his above-average rate of inducing grounders and popups will play anywhere.
Rounding out this group is Jansen, who on a rate basis has hit better than any other catcher in baseball, with a 191 wRC+ in 82 trips to the plate entering last night’s game. His injury history should scare teams a little bit; he’s never had more than 384 plate appearances in a season, and that was back in 2019. It’s also worth noting, as our associate editor Matt Martell wrote last year for the New York Times, that teams rarely trade for a catcher during the season because of the particular challenges that come with the position. Even so, I think Jansen is well-suited for the role Mitch Garver held last year with the Rangers: catching sometimes but also getting plenty of plate appearances at DH to make sure his bat stays in the lineup.
Defensive whiz Kevin Kiermaier, righty changeup specialist Trevor Richards, and lefty power bat Daniel Vogelbach round out the group of seven Blue Jays who get to fly freely at the end of the season.
Blow It Up
OK, but what if the Jays do decide to more or less tear it down? After all, it is the struggling big three hitters — Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Bo Bichette, and George Springer — who deserve at least a decent chunk of the blame for Toronto’s underperformance. The team didn’t even get a homer from a cleanup hitter until Bichette hit one on Wednesday — 48 games into the season!
I don’t think the Blue Jays would go so far as to trade Kevin Gausman, Chris Bassitt, or José Berríos, since Berríos is the only one pitching particularly well this year and his opt out after 2026 may complicate things too much to work out a trade, but the rest of that group of players with club control beyond this season could be on the block, headlined by Guerrero Jr. and Bichette.
Vladdy continues to tantalize with his bullet home runs (though he has only five this year) and massive exit velocity, but as we move further and further away from it, his MVP-caliber 2021 campaign looks more like an outlier than a sign of things to come, as it surely appeared to be in its immediate aftermath. Still, he’s in just his age-25 season, and it’s absolutely plausible that another team could bring out the best in him. I’m puzzled trying to figure out what he’d bring back in a trade, since he’s making $19.9 million this year and will probably be up around $25 million next year, but let’s not overthink things. He’s Vladimir Guerrero Jr., and if his suitors aren’t going to give up at least one top 100 prospect for him, the Blue Jays should tell them to get lost.
Bichette is more or less the same guy at the end of every season, with a wRC+ between 120 and 130 in each of the last four years; over the last three, he’s hit 29, 24, and 20 home runs, respectively. His fielding is always below average (but not terrible), and the only skill that’s on the decline is his base-stealing, with 25 stolen bases in 2021 followed by 13 in ’22 and just five last season, though he already has four this year. On the surface, the man is a metronome, but things get … weird … under the hood. Last year, his first-half wRC+ was 132, followed by 109 in the second half. The year prior, it was just 106 in the first half before he surged to 164 after the All-Star break. That streakiness is why I’m really not concerned about his performance thus far this year; the dude is bound to get hot at some point! It would be foolish of teams to just assume things will even out, but they shouldn’t read too much into his slow start, either. A contending team in need of a shortstop this year, such as the Giants or Guardians, would certainly be interested.
The Blue Jays would get far more modest returns for right-handed closer Jordan Romano, righty relievers Chad Green and Erik Swanson, lefty relievers Tim Mayza and Génesis Cabrera, and utilitymen Isiah Kiner-Falefa and Cavan Biggio, but they could be used as an add-on piece to sweeten the return in a trade for one of Toronto’s top players or to acquire prospect depth in a separate deal. After all, the Blue Jays’ farm system has just two Top 100 Prospects: lefty pitcher Ricky Tiedemann and infielder Orelvis Martinez.
I’m not here to advocate for Toronto to take any particular path; I’m just laying out the options. The worst plan for the Blue Jays would be not having one.
Weekend Windup
Here are some things to keep an eye on as we head into the long Memorial Day weekend:
• Ketel Marte looks to extend his 21-game hitting streak — the longest in the majors this season — when the Diamondbacks begin a three-game set at home tonight against the Marlins. Lefty Braxton Garrett gets the start for Miami, which bodes well for Marte, who is hitting .347 against lefties this year.
• The Cubs and Cardinals will finally meet for the first time this year, opening a three-game set tonight at Busch Stadium. The Cardinals have looked cooked for most of the first quarter of the season, but they enter the weekend just five games out of first place in the NL Central after winning eight of their last 10 games — including being the first team to sweep the Orioles in the regular season since Adley Rutschman came up two years ago.
• Juan Soto returns to San Diego for the first time since the Padres traded him to the Yankees last December, and comes back to town on fire. Over his last six games, Soto is 9-for-23 (.391) with four home runs and seven RBIs. After a mini-slump dropped his average to .301 and his OPS to .917, those numbers are back to .312 and .972, respectively. He’ll be flanked in the lineup as usual by Anthony Volpe, who’s got a 16-game hitting streak, and Aaron Judge, who homered yet again on Thursday for his 15th of the season.
• Once his 10-game suspension for pitching with “sticky stuff” is over, Ronel Blanco is set to return on Sunday against the A’s. While he asserted the substance he got caught using was just rosin mixed with sweat, he’ll surely be under increased scrutiny. Blanco, who has a 2.09 ERA in eight starts so far in 2024, was the first pitcher to be suspended for foreign substances this season after four were suspended last year.
• Nick Lodolo is aiming to return to the Reds rotation on Monday, and boy could they use him. The Reds have floundered to a 4-16 record in their last 20 games, and Lodolo had a 3.34 ERA and 2.90 FIP in six starts before hitting the IL with a groin injury. That was his second IL stint this year, after he missed the season’s first couple weeks while recovering from the leg fracture that cost him most of 2023.
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the end of the Orioles’ sweep-less streak, Oneil Cruz’s mismatch between top-tier tools and pedestrian production, the Phillies’ strength of schedule, Steven Okert and the etiquette of tipping one’s bullpen-cart driver, Kyle Hendricks and the decline of the 2016 Cubs’ core, and some Shohei Ohtani real-estate news. Then (47:14) they talk to The Athletic senior writer Evan Drellich about Rob Manfred’s press conference on Thursday, the uncertainty surrounding MLB’s broadcast/streaming future, the possibility (and potential ramifications) of nationalizing the sport’s media rights, a private-equity takeover of the minor leagues, and more, plus (1:27:57) several postscript follow-ups.
It’s been a fun couple of weeks seeing all the work that has been done as a result of Statcast’s expanding into bat tracking. The great thing about this game is that there is always more to learn. With the addition of bat speed and swing length, we now have a better idea of telling the story of a player’s swing, but there is still so much more to tap into.
Back when I was using a Blast Motion bat sensor on a daily basis, I was exposed to every component of the swing that you could think of. Bat speed was one of them, but that only scratched the surface. There were pieces explaining my path at different points in the swing, how long it took my barrel to meet the plane of the ball, where in space that happened, and so much more. For a while, the public data available was focused on the outcome. What was the pitch? What was the result? What was the exit velocity and/or launch angle? With this new update, we’re progressing toward the how. How fast did the player swing? How long was their swing? We can now tie that in with the result, but there are additional details needed to understand the full scope of how results happened. That’ll be the focus of this piece.
First, it’s important to highlight the great work that has already been done explaining the new data we have and what the information tells (and doesn’t tell) us about the swing. Ben Clemens explained some applications of the new metrics and what their relationship with performance is on a macro scale. One thing Ben mentioned that resonated with me is thinking about the new (and old) information as inputs for us to use to understand performance rather than the answers themselves. Each piece works together to tell a story, whether that be league wide or player specific. Basically, these are pieces of information that need additional context.
Relatedly, Patrick Dubuque and Stephen Sutton-Brown from Baseball Prospectus, provided a great analysis of how to put bat speed into the context of pitch counts, from the perspective of both the hitter and pitcher. And there is more beyond just these two, including Noah Woodward’s Substack post about bat speed, swing length, and understanding what they mean and how they contribute to the swing.
Woodward touched on a few components of the swing that I’ve talked about in previous work that we still don’t have comprehensive data on from Statcast: contact point and attack angle. Swing variability, swing adjustability, having A and B swings, etc. are all extremely important to being successful at the big league level. If you have a hole in your swing, generally speaking, pitchers will expose you, so having multiple high-quality swings is going to set you up to have consistent success, just askTriston Casas. Swing-by-swing data on attack angle, vertical and horizontal bat angle, and point of contact will all help the public understanding of swing variability, or when and how the swing changes in general.
Let’s start with attack angle. This is the angle of the bat path at contact, relative to the ground. As your bat travels through the zone, it creates a trajectory. To optimize your chances of hitting the ball in the air, the bat should be on an upward trajectory at contact, meaning you should have a positive attack angle. One component of swing variability is creating a positive attack angle at different heights, widths, and depths. You pretty much just want to be able to manipulate your barrel to move upward no matter where the pitch is. To get a better idea of what attack angle looks like, let’s look at a video from David Adler outlining a swing from Oneil Cruz:
Bat path tracking — Oneil Cruz 120.4 mph single (hardest-hit ball in MLB this year)
While attack angle is officially measured as the angle of the path at contact, seeing the path leading up to contact can tell us what kind of depth the hitter creates. In this clip, the angle of the path changes as it moves from behind Cruz’s body to in front of it. This illuminates how attack angle is dependent on point of contact. In general, the farther in front of the plate your bat is, the easier it is to create a positive attack angle. However, this thread from Driveline’s Director of Hitting, Tanner Stokey, discusses the importance of creating bat speed deep in the zone. The best hitters create their peak speeds in tight windows. Like all facets of baseball, swinging is about striking a balance of creating high levels of bat speed and positive attack angles. You don’t want to have a one dimensional swing that is focused on high bat speed while ignoring the need to create ideal bat angles both deep in the zone and in front of the plate.
Depending on how you start your swing and enter the zone, it takes time to turn your barrel over into an upward slope. For many hitters, the bat needs to travel a greater distance to create the positive attack angle that leads to optimal contact. This, of course, takes more time. But, as Robert Orr pointed out last week in his piece on the relationship between pulled fly balls and swing length, a long swing isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it’s really just another data point. With access to attack angle, we could better tell the story of how a hitter like Isaac Paredes creates depth in his swing while often making ideal contact far out in front of the plate, versus a hitter who makes contact out in front without creating the necessary depth in their swing to avoid major holes.
At the same time, it’s still possible to create a positive attack angle deeper in the hitting zone. To get there, you need to make movements that aren’t easy to do while generating bat speed and controlling your body. Some hitters with great mobility use lateral torso bend — they lean toward their back leg right before contact — to get their barrel on an upward slope deep in the hitting zone. Think of Shohei Ohtani or Edouard Julien:
These two have unorthodox skills that allow them to launch pitches high in the air to the opposite field. With point of contact and attack angle, we’d be able to quantify how different they really are from their peers on top of the visual analysis.
Then there are hitters who create flatter (but still positive) attack angles with a path that stays on a similar plane throughout their swing. They get on plane with the ball early and don’t do much to change their path throughout the swing. It’s nearly impossible to do this with a steep swing. Juan Soto is a great example of this, even if he is more powerful than the other hitters with this swing style. Here is a great angle that illustrates what I’m referencing:
Bat path tracking — Juan Soto 112.0 mph line-drive single off Justin Verlander
Soto’s vertical entry angle (angle of the bat relative to the ground at the beginning of the downswing) isn’t far off from his attack angle. You can see how much this swing contrasts with that of Cruz, who is a big dude with a narrow stance. Because of that, his bat path is vertically oriented, and his bat needs to travel a greater distance to get on plane with the ball. With more detailed information of barrel angles at different points in the swing, we would know more about how hitters like Soto and Cruz vary from one another when it comes to getting and staying on plane.
This has been a ton of information all at once, so I’ll leave you with one last tidbit. Depending on the hitter, the angle of the path at contact can be very different from the angle of the barrel at contact (relative to the ground), known as vertical bat angle. While I’ve cited average vertical bat angle from SwingGraphs on several occasions, I’ve always focused on putting the metric into context because it varies based on several factors. Luis Arraez and Aaron Judge can have similar average vertical bat angles, but that doesn’t tell us anything about how different their swings are. We know the metric depends on pitch height, but even that alone isn’t enough to explain why Judge is a launcher and Arraez is a sprayer. As we learned earlier, each data point is an input and isn’t meant to be used alone.
There is no question teams have been using, monitoring, and applying these data to scout and develop players for years now, but despite all the metrics that we have, the information on the public side is still lagging. Ideally, in future years, we will gain access to more swing data so that we can better understand the game we love.
For years now, a simple message has been gaining traction in major league bullpens and pitching labs: Just throw it down the middle. As big league pitches have gotten speedier and bendier, the people who throw them have been increasingly advised to trust their stuff, stop nibbling around the edges, and attack the heart of the zone. Adam Berry wrote about the Rays adopting this approach in 2021. In 2022, Bryan Adams superfan Justin Choi looked into the numbers and noted, “In each season since 2015, when Statcast data became public, hitters have accumulated a negative run value against down-the-middle fastballs.” Last year, Stephanie Apstein documented the phenomenon in Baltimore, while Hannah Keyser and Zach Crizer did the same on a league-wide basis, describing the Rays model thusly:
Step 1: Develop unhittable stuff
Step 2: Let it rip down the middle
Step 3: Win
Just last week, Jeff Fletcher wrote that after trying and failing to get their pitchers to attack the zone more often, the Angels started putting their pitchers in the box to face their own arsenal, courtesy of a Trajekt pitching machine. “I knew my pitches were good,” said José Soriano through an interpreter, “but when I faced myself, I find out they’re really good. So I have more trust in my stuff now.” Pitches right down the middle are called meatballs for a reason, but if you’ve ever watched peak Max Scherzer demolish the heart of the other team’s lineup by simply pumping 97-mph fastballs across the heart of the plate, none of this comes as a galloping shock.
Still, I wondered whether I could find data to back up this shift in mindset. Are pitchers really attacking the zone more often? And are better pitching staffs (or staffs with better stuff) really attacking the middle of the plate more often? After all, the Angels rank 22nd in Stuff+ and 14th in PitchingBot Stuff, not to mention near the bottom in ERA, FIP, and xFIP. If they feel this good about their stuff, I’d imagine that every team does. Read the rest of this entry »
Dan Szymborski: I’m sad to report that the chili I was making last week when we chatted did not turn out well.
12:02
Dan Szymborski: I got careless with the salt and the whole thing was way too salty.
12:02
Dan Szymborski: So I had to eat it with VERY improper cheese and sour cream added in to mute the saltiness.
12:03
Joe: Can Gil be a front line guy? Or Schmidt? Both have looked great
12:04
Dan Szymborski: Both are certainly making their cases. Pitching development is weird, so when a guys’ working out a lot of the time it’s just him working out
Since the dawn of time, there’s always been at least one elite major league closer who’s thrown the cutter almost exclusively. By “dawn of time” I mean the mid-1990s, of course, but I think we can all agree that civilization only truly began when humankind discovered frosted tips and cargo shorts. First there was Mariano Rivera, then Kenley Jansen, and now that everything from the ’90s is back in style, there’s Emmanuel Clase.
Clase has been a crucial part of Cleveland’s surprising run to first place in the AL Central; he’s recorded the win or the save in 18 of the Guardians’ 33 victories, and he’s fifth among relievers in WPA. Cleveland’s record in one-run games is 8-6, which isn’t particularly freakish, but the Guardians are 8-2 in one-run games when Clase pitches, and 0-4 when he doesn’t.
Here’s another fun one: Clase is on pace for the first 50-save season in MLB since Edwin Díaz in 2018, and 3.4 WAR, which would be the most by a Guardians reliever since 1988. WAR wasn’t even a stat back then! Read the rest of this entry »
I’m writing this article for selfish reasons. Every Monday, I chat with FanGraphs readers (come hang out with us! But not next Monday, because it’s a holiday). Four or five times per chat, someone asks a variation of the same question: “Should my team trade this reliever who has been better than expected to a contender for a huge haul?” Four or five times per chat, I say that they should, but that no one would trade with them. So now, I’m trying to put some numbers to it.
The first argument against doing this is fairly simple: Reliever performance doesn’t work that way. To measure this analytically, I took a bunch of recent seasons (2019, 2021, 2022, and 2023) and split them into two. I looked at the correlation between first-half numbers and second-half numbers for every reliever we listed as qualified in the first half of those seasons. I was looking for a simple question: How much can we infer about second-half numbers based on first-half numbers?
The answer, unsurprisingly, is “not very much.” There’s an obvious problem. Relievers simply don’t pitch very many innings. Last year, Jake Bird led all relievers in innings pitched at the All-Star break, with 53.1. Most relievers had meaningfully fewer innings. They didn’t pitch a ton of innings in the second half, either, because that’s just not how relief pitching works. Only 20 relievers threw 70 or more innings last year. Read the rest of this entry »
On the first knuckleball thrown at Coors Field in 16 years, Matt Waldron hit home plate umpire Bill Miller right in the nuts.
Nobody — not Waldron, not his catcher Kyle Higashioka, not Miller — appeared to know where the ball was going. Despite Higashioka frequently (and understandably) struggling to track the flight of the ball throughout the rest of the night, Waldron delivered a career-best performance, allowing just one run over six innings.
Perhaps the most surprising part of his performance was the setting. Since 2008, knuckleballers have dodged outings at Coors Field, which sits 5,200 feet above sea level. Conventional wisdom dictates that knuckleballs at altitude are a bad idea, as Cy Young-winning knuckleballer R.A. Dickey told Dave Krieger back in 2012. Read the rest of this entry »
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Dan Szymborski
